Thailand could get the boot
Natthaporn Phanlert, a defender on the national football team, holds his son as he and team-mate Jakrit Boonkam arrive at Suvarn-abhumi Airport yesterday from Singapore. The Thai side will face Singa-pore again in the second leg of the Asean Football Cham
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Thailand could be kicked out of the Asean Football Championship for their protest against a penalty that helped Singapore gain a 2-1 home victory in the first leg of the final on Wednesday.
Emotions are running high in Thailand after fans saw the three-time champions go down in a controversial defeat. The score was tied at 1-1 when Malaysian referee C Ravichandran awarded a highly debatable penalty to Singapore with eight minutes remaining after Noh Alam Shah went down in the box under a challenge from defender Niweat Siriwong - a decision that even seemed to surprise the Singaporean forward. Thai fans and players felt the referee made several dubious decisions in favour of the hosts. In one incident, the referee awarded Thailand a free kick but bizarrely measured the 10-yard distance from the wall instead of the set-piece spot as usual. Thailand had already been angered by other decisions of the referee, and their protest over the penalty caused the match to be suspended for about 15 minutes after their players walked off the pitch. Thailand team manager Tawat-chai Sajjakul is convinced his side will not receive any punishment when the Asean Football Federation (AFF) discusses the issue in its meeting today. "I think we did nothing wrong, because the protest was in accordance with AFF regulations. The rules state the game can be stopped when any team protests but not for more than 15 minutes," said Tawatchai. "The lads camped on the sidelines before they returned to the field in a period of time that I think was not more than the limit. "We held the protest because if we had let play continue at that time, there was a high possibility the situation would escalate. We wanted to take a pause in order to make our players calm down. "I don't think the AFF will punish us with a suspension for any of my players. If they want to hand punishment to us, they'll have to ban our whole team from the second leg, because we were all involved in the protest. "Should they really ban us, it looks certain they'll have to do it to other teams in the future, because I think there will be other cases just like ours. "There is a high possibility the tournament would come to an end. There would be no point in holding the event if such punishments continually happened."
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